Cambridge Medicine Students and Applicants

So I found out that one of the interviewers at Robinson gave some mock interviews at this school in Essex , and the mock he gave was the actual interview that one of our clinical interviews is..
Bit unfair, no?

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So I found out that one of the interviewers at Robinson gave some mock interviews at this school in Essex , and the mock he gave was the actual interview that one of our clinical interviews is..
Bit unfair, no?

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WHAT?? that's ridiculous!! They even make us swear not to inform other candidates of questions

Edit: Good luck there today btw!!!

I didn't get made to swear anything..
I know. So utterly ridiculous he did that. I want to complain... The guy who told me about it was really nice though and his ums was 89% so I'm not too worried...:P

First clinical was SOLID. Proper testing and challenging. I managed to get the answers eventually but only after a lot of pushing and help. Made some silly errors as well

Second clinical was so unbelievably easy I can only think that they had given up.on.me. No lateral thinking, It was just knowledge recall :L Directed the entire interview to stuff I was happy to talk about as well

Overall: Enjoyable and testing day

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Going slightly off track. Apparently it is no longer possible to transfer to London for the clinical years ( I only found out earlier today). i was really hoping to transfer to London to experience a more diverse culture, if I'm lucky enough to be offered a place. Does anyone know what kind of communities there are around the Cambridge hospitals?

If I get high ums average (maths bio chem) but bad in my 4th (music dropping after as), will they take that into consideration?

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Well they looked at my AS UMS and said in my interview they could see from that my science knowledge was obviously higher than the 4.3 I got.

Believe medics are ranked on three most relevant
Music won't be in that haha


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If i'll do as history, literature, chem, bio, maths. Which ums are they going to check ?


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Can only assume biol chem maths
However you still need to excel in the other two aswell


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Medics are not ranked purely on UMS. The relevant UMS are the science UMS but they include GCSE and BMAT in medical student ranking. They don't publish the formula.


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Medics are not ranked purely on UMS. The relevant UMS are the science UMS but they include GCSE and BMAT in medical student ranking. They don't publish the formula.


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The thing is i got all B's in gcse but I know i could get the grades in AS. So will that hinder me? Im just extremely worried about BMAT and personal statement


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Well.... They do kinda :3

Basically, if this formula is used, GCSEs are scored in context of the school's average performance - what was your school like?. They also may use a Merit Score, which is a way of standardising, or normalising, SUMS and GCSEs across all applicants.

There's also another document detailing correlation of different academic factors to Tripos performance; from this, you can see that for Medicine, GCSEs are shown to have a stronger correlation than BMAT but weaker than AS UMS. I guess it's likely then that they will have some influence on intake, but it's hard to work out in what manner.

Also, there's a Powerpoint which shows scatter-plots of A*s at GCSE for Medicine applicants; from this, you can see that the average nA*s is around 6 for applicants, yet around 8A*s for successful applicants (in this year). You can also see that no one got in with no A*s in this year Also, this shows you the kind of UMS range the average successful applicant may have.

Basically... We can't know at this point if your ASs could redeem you, but with all Bs, they'd really have to be ****ing spectacular! It may be that some colleges don't use GCSEs much, or that the viewing of GCSEs for Medicine has changed from when these articles were made, but you would be going up against hundreds of candidates with endless A*s and 95+% UMS, so being realistic, you may be cut-off before interview.

Really sorry if this seems harsh from me!

Its ok, I had much worser things come into my life. About the A* candidates, i get that, i mean not everyone has the guts of placing cambridge on ucas. I personally hate rejection but the thing is I adapt and forget what cant be done and focus on what can be done. Theres hardly anything I could do with my gcse, so I can only improve on Alevels and perhaps take 5 or 6 alevels. Do well on bmat and just do voluntary work in school, do u think being in a recycling club helps ? Doing debating helps ? Working in disabled? Doing swimming ? Being in school magazine as a writer, will those help for cambridge ? If I'll have any questions, its ok to pm you ?
Oh and btw did u do ur bmat already ? Whats ur as grades and what subjects you took ?


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Don't spread yourself too thinly. It's far better to get very high UMS in 4 AS-levels (at least three sciences) then to get less good marks in 5/6 subjects. This plus the BMAT are the most important things for Cambridge. All those extra-curriculars will mean nothing if you don't have the grades - and again, it's better to do one or two things really well than to employ a scattergun approach. You also need work experience for all of your medicine applications.